Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, told CNBC over the weekend that the company is "open" to selling its 5G chips to Apple. But the two companies have not spoken about the subject, another top Huawei boss said Tuesday.Tech

Whether Travis d’Arnaud remains with the Mets is another question, but the catcher has avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year deal with the club for $ 3.515 million, an industry source confirmed Saturday. D’Arnaud earned $ 3.475 million last season, when he appeared in just four games before undergoing Tommy John surgery. The Mets expect he…Sports | New York Post

The Fixer Upper star took to Instagram to share a sweet message to Chip and thank him for staying by her side through the last fifteen years as they pursued their dream of growing their company, Magnolia, together.

“It all started with a dream that I jotted down on a legal pad back in 2003,” Gaines writes. “Thank you Chip Carter for helping me turn what was on that piece of paper into a reality. These last fifteen years have been equal parts scary and exciting and there’s no one else I’d rather by my side than you.”

Over the weekend, the lovebirds held their annual “Silobration” in Waco, Texas, where the town comes out to their Magnolia Market at the Silos compound to enjoy a vendor fair, food trucks, and live music. Ahead of the festivities, Joanna was feeling a little sentimental about Magnolia’s 15th anniversary, and posted a series of throwback photos of her and Chip to commemorate the milestone anniversary of their company.

“15 years ago… Happy Anniversary Magnolia!” she wrote, before calling out a few things from the pictures, taken during their first year in business, including her bright red lipstick, and a vase on the counter. “I remember I stenciled the words ‘imagine’ and ‘dream’ on these glass jugs we bought for a buck each at a garage sale. They were my best seller that season.”

“The sign on the building was what @chipgaines surprised me with when we found out we couldn’t afford a real sign,” Joanna wrote, referring to the DIY “Magnolia” sign that sat atop their first storefront. “He always saves the day.”

In the photo gallery, Gaines also shared her “biggest regret,” selling a large antique counter. “I still think about that thing,” she wrote.

“I have zero regrets though about stepping out and just going for it—this shop, this business, it has our hearts,” she continued. “We are so thankful and this is why we SILOBRATE! Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the years, we wouldn’t be here without you.”

Bloomberg Businessweek published a nuclear warhead-tipped report on Thursday alleging that Chinese military operatives have engaged in an unprecedented espionage campaign: Planting minuscule spy-chips on server motherboards that wound up inside “almost 30” companies, ranging from Apple to Amazon. While squishy on technical details, the magazine claimed that members of the People’s Liberation Army snuck rice grain-sized microchips onto these key IT infrastructure components during the manufacturing process, and the spies thereby gained, effectively, god-like powers over the machines.

There’s just one hitch: Just about every named organization has rejected the report. Supermicro, the business whose motherboards were said to contain the hardware backdoors, disputed the story. Amazon echoed the rebuttal. And Apple said it had “never found” anything like what Bloomberg described, “never had any contact with the FBI or any other agency about such an incident,” and was “not aware of any investigation.” (China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not outright reject the report, but described its claims as “gratuitous accusations and suspicions.”)

This is all very troubling. Did China subvert a global technology supply chain upon which the world’s economy is built? Did it so imperil international relations? Or is the story off the mark?

Bloomberg said its reporting derived from 17 unnamed sources, including “senior Apple insiders” and “senior national security officials.” Without more transparency, it’s hard to assess the piece’s veracity. While one might wish for greater openness, national security matters of equal gravity often necessitate secrecy. So the world is left to speculate.

This is a story worth paying attention to. Given the strongly worded denials from all parties involved, one must proceed with skepticism. It seems tremendously convenient that the report appeared now, just as talk of a trade war between the U.S. and China gets boiling. It makes me wonder, who might have agenda to push? Context seems an important factor to consider.

It’s likely there is truth in the piece, but in which parts remains an open question.

A piece of the puzzle. Jigsaw, an Alphabet unit that builds security, privacy, and anti-censorship tools, has released a new app called Intra. The app is designed to block DNS manipulation attacks, a censorship tactic that certain nation-states, like Venezuela and Turkey, have used to intercept and block or redirect website visits by their populations. Jigsaw said the tool will be embedded by default into the next version of Google’s mobile operating system, Android Pie.

No fly zone. Google CEO Sundar Pichai paid a quiet visit to the Pentagon following the tech giant’s decision not to renew a contract supplying AI tech to a military program, The Washington Postreports. Pichai supposedly sought to smooth over tensions after his company backed out of the defense deal, which involved analyzing video captured by drones. Thousands of employees had objected to the program, dubbed Project Maven.

Please re-enter password. California has signed into a law a bill that will require manufacturers of Internet-connected devices to create unique passwords for each device made or sold in the state. In other words, manufacturers of said devices can no longer use generic, pre-programmed passwords like “admin” or “password” to secure their products. If they do, customers have the right to sue for damages.

In short, I fear Google is well on the way to becoming a different kind of company, and it worries me. This is not because I inherently love Google–it’s a profit-making entity, and its shareholders will always come before me. But I worry that it is increasingly trading away my trust for short-term benefits. Even worse, this course change indicates that companies’ self-interest in maintaining user trust may not be a match for the business pressures that drive them to become more intrusive.

ONE MORE THING

The Prince and the Pauper. A jet-setting, diamond-binging, sports car-splurging man known to investors the world over as His Royal Highness Khalid bin al-Saud–a self-proclaimed son of the Saudi Arabian king–was exposed as an alleged “epic con artist” by U.S. prosecutors in November. The man, whose real name is Anthony Enrique Gignac, is said to have begun life as a Colombian orphan, later adopted by a middle class couple from Michigan. Vanity Fair tells the unbelievable story of an international man of mystery.

http://www.acrx.org -As millions of Americans strive to deal with the economic downturn,loss of jobs,foreclosures,high cost of gas,and the rising cost of prescription drug cost. Charles Myrick ,the President of American Consultants Rx, announced the re-release of the American Consultants Rx community service project which consist of millions of free discount prescription cards being donated to thousands of not for profits,hospitals,schools,churches,etc. in an effort to assist the uninsured,under insured,and seniors deal with the high cost of prescription drugs.-American Consultants Rx -Pharmacy Discount Network News